Au Revoir, Ireland!

For the uninitiated amongst you, next summer will see the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa (I am, of course, talking about football) and never have I been more excited about a tournament. England - disgustingly, I might add - failed to qualify for the European Championships in 2008 and so by the time next summer comes around, it will be 4 full years since I supported my national side in a bona fide tournament. I will be out of the country of course, and there will be some interesting sleep patterns during the tournament (I'm sure Kendra will be delighted) but I have promised myself that if, by some miracle, we are in the final on Sunday July 11th in Johannesburg, I will be in England to watch the game. Come what may. The thought of being away from my mates when we win the World Cup is too heart-breaking to consider. I can't see it being a problem though. We'll get knocked out in the quarters amidst fury and great expectation like every other tournament.

Anyway, England qualified with a near-perfect record in the group and so avoided the play-offs between teams who had equal points at the top of the groups. These play-offs were, controversially, seeded. This meant that the higher ranked teams that had made it to this stage (Portugal, Greece, Russia and, as will become pertinent to the story, France) would avoid each other and so will play the lower ranked teams of Ukraine, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republic of Ireland. The theory being that the higher-ranked teams (and, in most cases, the best players) would go to the World Cup Finals thus ensuring the most high-profile and exciting tournament possible - what everybody should want. I agree with the system. It sucks for the lower-ranked teams but, anybody thinking it should be easy to reach the World Cup Finals is dreaming. You'll have to beat good teams when you're there and you should have to beat good teams to get there. In my opinion.

These were the fixtures -

• Russia v Slovenia
• Greece v Ukraine
• Portugal v Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Republic of Ireland v France

These games would be played over 2 legs - home and away - with the winners proceeding to the World Cup Finals in South Africa. Greece and Portugal came through their ties without too much difficulty and Slovenia pulled off a minor shock by beating Russia on the away goals rule after two tight legs. And then... Well, then there was the Ireland - France game.

Ah, the luck of the Irish, eh? You've got to feel bad for them, I suppose. Here's what happened. The first leg, in Ireland, went 1-0 to the French and it looked like it was all over for Ireland. From what I've seen of the game they didn't play well and nobody really gave them a chance of going to the Stade de France - a ground where France have won 80% of their games - and getting a victory. The game came around the Irish were terrific. They outplayed the French on their own soil, wanted it more and were rewarded with a goal from The World's Most Irish Man (Robbie Keane). The game looked like it was heading for penalties and in the last few minutes of the second half Ireland were pinned back in their half defending the French onslaught. And, then this happened.

It's a blatant handball. The ball bounces in the 6-yard box (and Roy Keane was right, by the way, that should never have happened) hits Thierry Henry's forearm and begins to bounce harmlessly out of play, before Henry taps it down to his feet with his hand and prods it across goal for Gallas to score the winning goal. It happens so quickly that it is hard to notice until a few watches of the clip, but it definitely does. Henry cheated, it led directly to a goal and because of that Ireland will not be going to the World Cup.

The reaction to this has been, quite predictably, one of outrage. And, again predictably, massively out of proportion. I hate cheating on the football pitch. It angers me. To see Henry celebrating that goal makes me feel sick (but, then again, seeing Thierry Henry celebrate anything has always made me feel sick - I've never liked him) and I fully support the reasonable points that have been brought up in the wake of this dispute. There is, perhaps, room for another official on each goal line. If there was one at the game, it is much more likely the handball would have been given. I agree that the officials involved in this game should be banned, as failing to spot such a blatant offence is gross misconduct. I also agree that Henry should not have stuck his hand out to cheat and that he now, deservedly, will go down as one of the world's great football cheats. Like this gentleman.

However, I do not agree that there should be a video referee like in Rugby. "Oh, but it works so well in Rugby, we should have it in football". NO! For a start rugby is boring as hell and should not be held up as a sport we're inclined to copy and secondly, human error is a part of football and to take it away would sterilise the game beyond belief. And to ask for the game to be replayed? The Irish FA have lost so much credibility with this request that my sympathy for them has almost dissipated. If the game were to be replayed, we would be plunged into absolute chaos and it would set a precedent that would ruin football as a concept for ever more. Thierry Henry has to live with the knowledge that his country have qualified for the World Cup because he cheated. I'm certain that if he had the chance to, he would go back, not handle it and allow the game to run to extra time or penalties when the French would have probably won anyway. However, going back is not an option (in fact, is about as likely as the game being replayed) and the Irish need to get over it. Move on. Maintain the dignity you deserve after putting on a valiant display in France. The fact of the matter remains that had you won more games in the group stage, then the play-off would have been unnecessary. As it is, you will be watching the World Cup with a strange disconnection. Just as us Englishmen had to watch the 2008 Euros.

And besides, all that's really happened is the disappointment has been brought forward about 7 months, right?

See you in South Africa, Frenchy!

The 3-Month Bitch

Choooooooooon!

There is a sort of rule of thumb around these year-long teaching sojourns whereby the first few months are adventurous and exciting, full of new experiences and new people, thus making it easier to be away from your friends, and family, cats and dogs, food and television that you love so much. It is around this time, so the theory goes, that the '3-month itch' kicks in. I have very much reached this point.

The '3-month itch' consists of the following -

• missing your friends and family so much that even people you barely like from home enter your consciousness and you crave their company
• you salivate uncontrollably at the prospect of a decent slice of bacon or a full-bodied glass of beer
• the aspects of the foreign culture in which you exist that were previously exhilarating and fascinating become annoying and even mundane
• a mild depression descends that sits over everything that you do.

Well, at least it does in my case.

Please, don't get me wrong. We're having a great time here. Work has become much more fun and rewarding over the last few weeks and I really feel like I am making headway in terms of getting to know the children and my teaching is consequently improving. We are studying Korean and reaping the rewards that this pastime brings. We feel more embedded in the culture and find that people relate to us much better now that we are making an effort to learn the language. We feel settled in Seoul and have enjoyed exploring the city, especially the culinary side of things, and now feel almost at home here. We are certainly happy. The problem is, quite simply, missing home and there's nothing I can do about it other than man up and get on with it. So I shall.

Anyway, the most exciting thing to happen to us in recent weeks is that we received confirmation from Kendra's recruiter that she has been accepted into Cardiff Uni to do her PGCE and so we are getting closer to our first choice move for next year. Now we only have the small matter of Kendra getting her visa (and my getting into Uni, ahem) and we will be all set! Anyway, even if I don't get in, we will certainly be moving to Wales (presuming the visa application goes without a hitch) and we are very excited to move to an English-speaking country (sort of), relatively close to my friends and family. Thrilled, even. Only 9 months to go!

Anyway, I'm going to leave this very short post here as we have to go out soon but I have pledged to keep this blog up more often. There may be less pictures, the posts may be less interesting, but I shall be posting every passing thought that enters my head. If you wish to unsubscribe, I shall perfectly understand. I just won't talk to you anymore.

Oh and, very briefly, let me recommend that you check out my friend the Postman's blog, The Sententious Vaunter. If there was a way of doing this without him knowing I was kissing his arse then I would, of course, pursue it but, as I know he will read this, I suppose there is no way around it. However, this is a very, very well written blog which I know would be of particular interest to my father and sister due to the Postman's recent pursuit of his pilots license. However, I have absolutely zero interest in aviation and even I find it fascinating. I wouldn't wax lyrical about something like this unless I actually meant it. Give it a read. Seriously, it's brilliant.

Anyway, I'm gonna go eat some dak galbi. For those of you that know what that is, I'm sure you'll be jealous.

Take it easy.

Love, Smithy x

Daily Hate Mail

Russell Brand has a joke about The Sun, "I grew up with The Sun. It's like an old friend. But it's, like...does anyone have an old friend that they just fucking hate?"

I feel that way about the Daily Mail. It's the paper we had delivered to my house my whole life and, until I was old enough to question the nonsense printed within that rag, it was the only paper I ever read. In fact my earliest memory of journalism as a concept was around the time of Stephen Lawrence's murder when the Mail printed it's infamous cover declaring a gang of youths to be his murderers and inviting people to sue them if they were wrong. I remember thinking how bold and brave that was, and wondering how a simple newspaper could know something that even the police did not - 'Here y'are coppers, go buy the Mail, they've got the bad guys for you!' - but now, as an older and (slightly) wiser man, I can see how this could be so. The police have to worry about a simple thing called 'The Truth'.

Now, those 5 lads might well have killed young Stephen Lawrence - they were certainly a racist, violent and small-minded group of individuals and an intelligent black man like Stephen Lawrence probably stood for eveything they despised - but that's not my point. My point is that the headline was there to sell papers and, in it's ferocity, exascerbate the issue of racial segregation within Blair's Britain. And those 5 men have never been convicted. We don't know if it was true.

This week, over 15 years on from the tragic death of young Stephen Lawrence, came the tragic death of young Stephen Gately, a pop singer with the irish boyband Boyzone and the star of a number of West End shows. Gately was 33 when he fell asleep on the sofa of his holiday home in Majorca and never woke up, the coroners verdict being that he died of a rare condition culminating in a build up of fluid on his lungs. This was the tragic death of a young man in his prime, and one that affected many people as he was a popular man with fans all over the world.

Oh, by the way, Stephen Gately was homosexual.

The Daily Mail waited a few days, during which the pathologist report came back showing that Gately died of natural causes, before publishing a piece by their esteemed columnist Jan Moir entitled 'A Strange Lonely and Troubling Death'. Throughout this piece, Moir makes the most oblique and petty jabs at the circumstances surrounding Gately's death and displays a lack of sympathy and respect that is disgustingly typical of this most sneering of tabloids. She shamelessly uses phrases like, "sleazy" and "dubious" and suggests that, as another man joined Gately and his partner back at their apartment, "It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards." No, Ms Moir, it fucking is disrepectful, and it is journalism of the most pathetic standard to take such a low blow at a dead young man who had not yet even been buried. She goes on to suggest that Gately's death, "strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships" that he, "at least" smoked cannabis on the night that he died and that, "his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition". Yeah, I wonder why that is, Jan? Could it be that the coroner said that's how he died? Could it be that there isn't a jot of evidence to suggest that anything untoward happened that night? Could it be that smoking a spliff before bed does not lead you to die in your sleep - ever?

Even though every shred of evidence and common sense points to the contrary, Jan Moir displays an arrogance and self-belief in her bigotry that would be almost admirable were it not for it's stupidity. I began to get on my high horse when I first read this article, and worried for the number of people who would be sat around, nodding to themselves, and thinking how this dangerous homosexual got his just desserts for the "dark appetites...and private vice" that he embraced. But after this initial anger and fear subsided, I'm left with only pity. The article was pathetic. A disgusting, poorly written, dreadfully ill-researched load of tripe that could just as easily have been written by a 16-year-old idiot. It just seems so fucking 80's to even bother being racist and homophobic now. What's the point? I'm sure when you were a little girl dreaming of seeing your words in print, you saw yourself making snidey little jokes about dead, gay pop stars. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Oh, and to anyone who still reads this piece of shit, please stop. It stands against everything that a forward-thinking human being should believe in. And it is forward-thinking that this poor little planet of ours needs nowadays.

Love, Smithy x

Sundays, eh?

These are just a few of the convoluted thoughts that have passed through my head this past weekend -

• Autumn is a fantastic season in a country where the words 'grey skies' and 'drizzle' mean not a jot.
• Krispy Kreme is as dangerous as crack.
• The deaths of Michael Jackson and Stephen Gately are not - I repeat, not - comparable.
• The crescendo of strings at 5:56 in Noah and The Whale's First Days of Spring is as exciting a moment in music as any other.
• Beef is good.
• Missing friends and family members is not a sharp, impossible-to-ignore pain but more a dull, never-ending ache.
• The England national team, like Manchester City, will find a way of fucking up every opportunity that is put in front of them.
• Had Barack Obama been white he would not have won the Nobel Peace Prize but, if he had been white and had won the prize, nobody would have said a word about it.
  
• I want a puppy.
• I am becoming dangerously blase about suicide bombs and the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - proof positive perhaps that apathy will be the friend of the tyrant.
• The death penalty is, without a shadow of doubt in my mind, wrong.
• The love of a good woman can make everything else seem rather meaningless.
• Learning new languages is actually rather exciting.
• I don't look good in purple.
• You get what you pay for with W5,000 watches.
• Hidden geeky-ness is very attractive.
• I want a pair of 1980's original tortoiseshell RayBan Wayfarers, a gold Rolex and, in fact, the entire wardrobe (and not, I should add, the personality) of Patrick Bateman.
• AstroTurf burns take a long time to heal.
• Don't ask, don't tell could be the most offensive policy towards sexual orientation I have ever heard.
• To be a critic, be it in food, movies, sport or music, it must inherently mean that you spend your life criticising something that you are, in fact, not good enough to do yourself.
• The only bad thing about a good Sunday is the morning that follows.

Love, Smithy x

Soccer, Studying and Saluting

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything here which isn't very good now, is it? I'll just choonfully briefly bring you up-to-date on what we've been up to...

Work is going ok. Kendra seems to be finding her feet a bit more and, although she still finds it difficult with her less-than-enthusiastic students, and staff who think it appropriate to communicate only in hand gestures (a half-hearted salute on his entry and exit into the room), she comes home from work with a smile on her face more often than not which can only be a good thing. My work is plodding along. I'm beginning to build up relationships with a few kids as I begin to recognise their faces - as with last year I am more drawn to the cheeky ones and find them much more fun to teach. I have had a couple of small issues to do with money and with one co-teacher in particular who has been far from helpful - to be honest these issues didn't seem too small at the time - but I believe they are being sorted now and I should have the money that I'm owed within days. Or else I'm going to start throwing things at people.

We have taken as many opportunities as possible to get out and explore Seoul - starting from the touristy areas outwards. We went to Insa-dong with it's endless streets selling tradtitional Korean tat, we strolled through the department stores of Jongno-dong and the designer shops of Akpujeong. We also found a nice little park not far from our place in Yongsan-dong where we enjoyed the end-of-summer sunshine one Saturday afternoon. This really is a fantastic city.

For me, the most exciting thing that I've done since I last posted here is that I joined an expat football team, Seoul United FC, who play in the Seoul Sunday Football League. I was incredibly nervous before my first game as I hadn't played 11-a-side football for a good few years, but those nerves were eased slightly when I learnt that our opponents would be a Japanese team who were bottom of the league and who only had 10 players for the first half hour of the game. Anyway, I made a good account of myself - scoring the first goal and setting up a few others - and was asked to join the team for the rest of the season. It's going to be really good getting into the competitive spirit again and I can't wait for the games ahead. We had a friendly the other day and I managed to get on the scoresheet again from right-back so, fingers crossed, I can keep that going!

We have also signed up for Korean lessons every weekend, as both of us are a trifle embarrassed about our Korean ability after each living here for over a year. They will take place for 3 hours every Saturday and aren't exactly cheap, but it will make a huge difference being able to communicate properly with the locals, not to mention being quite interesting and giving us something productive to do with our time off. It will also be good to get back into studying mode because.....

We're going back to Uni next year. Well, Kendra is and I almost definitely am. This will be our last year teaching ESL after which we will both spend a year training before starting our careers. Kendra will do her teacher training which will give her a qualification allowing her to teach both in Britain and Canada (handy, given our little arrangement) and I will (fingers crossed) be doing a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism. Obviously nothing is set in stone, and the fact that I want this so much will probably allow sod's law to intervene and deny me my opportunity, but I'm going to do everything in my power to get accepted and then find the relevant funding to do it. Writing is the only thing I love doing (besides playing football and, when FC Seoul inevitably come knocking after my goal-to-game ratio becomes too impressive to ignore, I will have some serious decisons to make) so I've decided to stop saying, 'Well, I'd love to be a writer', and just go ahead and fucking be a writer. Maybe I won't be a millionaire, but I think I'd be happy. More important, some might say.

Anyway, that's the happy-hap from Seoul. Get in touch, let me know what you're up to and please leave feedback! 'Cause I probably miss you.

Love, Smithy x

Today's Cools and Not-So-Cools

Cools

• Random Fridays off work
• Cold pizza
• Free (good) coffee
• Naked ambition
• Terrific novels
• macbooks
• Free speech
• The Gaslight Anthem
• Nicely lit rooms
• Mid-morning naps
• Kendra
• Well-buttered toast
  
• 2 long weekends in a row
• Yorkshire tea

Not-So-Cools

• Kendra working
• Heavy-handed American policing
• The Entourage writing going bad
• Delayed pay-days
• Finishing said novel with no replacement
• Racism

That will be all!

CHOOOOOOON!!!

Love, Smithy x

Do I Make You Angry, Teacher?

Click here for one of the best rapper ever's best raps ever.

Last Friday saw me complete my first full week of teaching at an elementary school in the upmarket Seocho district of Seoul. The school is a 45-minute journey from my house with about 30 of that spent on the subway. The subway comes overground to cross the Han River every morning, and the novelty of this is still very much alive for me. Seoul does not have the instantly recognisable skyline of a New York or a London or a Hong Kong, but it is very much a foreign landscape, and looking across the river to the smog-covered skyscrapers makes me feel exhilaratingly far from home.

My school lies within spitting distance of the brand-new Sinpyeong-yeok subway and I emerge from underground into a high-rise suburbia which is currently under construction. Directly opposite the station is a huge and brand-new apartment complex that has been lived in for only two months or so, whilst to the right and left are immense building sites throwing up like-for-like apartment buildings for Seoul's white-collar workers. A quick survey of one of my classes informed me that my kids' parents are of the doctor, lawyer, architect and dentist variety. This is the Korean Cheshire Set. Seoul-derly Edge, if you will. A short walk through a small park and I enter the school, giving a half-bow to the two ladies stood with their little machine, taking the temperature of every child that enters. They have done this every day since I arrived as a precaution against swine flu (of which 2 kids have been diagnosed in the last week) and each day I'm tempted to go stand in front of them and hold my mouth open to see if they'd take mine. I haven't yet. I might, though.

The school is 4-storeys tall, reasonably modern, and clean. Each classroom (there are at least 40) is fitted with a 50-inch Samsung LCD TV which we use for displaying Powerpoints, flashcards and inappropriate YouTube videos (more of that later). I teach mainly 6th grade students, but I also have five 3rd Grade classes a week, two 2nd grade and one 1st Grade. Although this schedule makes my planning slightly more confusing than for other teachers in the SMOE programme, I can hardly complain as my planning tops out at four lessons a week. And that's if I find it in me to separate the 1st and 2nd graders in term of level - I haven't as yet. The kids are good fun, mostly well behaved and very, very smart. One 1st grader - a 6-year-old girl - pulled me up on my spelling of the word 'Clementine' by standing up, adjusting her glasses and saying, verbatim, "Teacher, I believe you have misspelled Clementine", before sitting down, adjusting her glasses again, and rolling her eyes at the boy sat next to her as if to say, "Who's this dipshit"? I turned and muttered "I think you'll find it's mis-spelt," before sulkily correcting my woeful spelling on the chalkboard. Turns out it is misspelled, actually.

We were promised more free time when we decided to take up public school positions and I suppose we have it...I guess it just depends what your definition of free time is. We have to be at school between 8.30am and 4.30pm but my teaching is always finished by 1.30pm. This means that I have a minimum of three hours planning time every day but,with only four (well, three) classes a week to plan for, this planning time becomes free time which must be spent at school. It is so, so boring. I am trying to use this time productively to do some writing, but it is a frustrating few hours and I would much prefer a system whereby, provided I could prove I had planned my lessons (and I would be happy to do this) I could go home and sit around in my boxer shorts rather than sit feverishly refreshing facebook or talking to the school geek about an Apocalypse theory he's read about on adolescentangst.com. Seems pointless to me.

The main difference in the teaching between our public school gigs and last year's hagwon job is the difference in class size. I have 25-30 students in each class and, whilst this makes the lesson more difficult to control, you do get more characters in your lessons. There's one kid in my class who doesn't say a word to anyone, does his work quietly and perfectly, but 3 times now has handed me a note at the end of class saying, in English, "Do I make you angry, Teacher"? Or the other lad who insists on doing the robot every time he moves away from his desk. Or, my personal favourite, the special needs boy at Kendra's school who will fix Kends with a keen stare before shouting, "MY NAME IS KENDRA TEACHER!" at the top of his voice and running out of the classroom, only to be found peeping around the door moments later to see if Kendra is looking. I suppose it is the kids that make a teacher's job worthwhile and it's moments like this that do make the boredom less of a pain. However, the main thing I miss from the smaller sized hagwon classes is the one-to-one interaction with the kids and I can't see a way of us getting that this year. It's a shame.

Another difference is that we have a co-teacher in each of our classes who, in theory, is there to control the class, help with any language barriers and do a little teaching. This relationship will be very important for the year ahead and I'm lucky that my co-teachers are quite cool, young and speak English well. We're getting along okay so far and, as I say, I feel lucky for that. However, one tip I would give to anyone considering this experience for themselves would be to double-check any YouTube videos you were thinking of showing the children before pressing play. In the first class that I would lead, and the first opportunity I had to impress my co-teacher with the world-class teaching that I bring to the table, I showed an animated video for the song, 'Anything You Can Do' from Annie Get Your Gun that I was using as a lesson on comparatives. The video ended with the two characters baring their arses before giving each other a double-fisted middle finger- something the students found considerably more amusing than my co-teacher did. Embarrassing moment #2 came during my first (and hopefully last) appearance on the school's television network when I was to introduce myself to the school and express my joy at returning to Korea. Humiliating enough, you might think. Well yes, you'd be correct, had I not coupled it with a huge outbreak of sweat and an odourless but definitely audible fart as I stepped in front of the camera. Horrific.

We knew coming into this that it would be a different working experience than last year, but I'm not sure we were prepared for how different it was going to be. The days are long, the teaching
difficult and, in a minority of cases, the colleagues are dickheads. But, one of the reasons we didn't take the hagwon jobs in Busan was to take ourselves out of our comfort zones and, when we order our 4th cocktails of the day, lying bollock-naked on a beach somewhere in south-east Asia come February, I'm sure we'll be able to see the benefits of our decision. We're in this together and I'm certain it will be worth while. Every day is an experience, and we should be thankful for that alone.

Anyway, I'm going to hit the sack. Got to do it all over again tomorrow.

Peace and love,

Smithy x